Lady Gaga lives for your applause and she doesn’t care whether it’s a genuinely well-earned round or just a cheap few claps in support of whatever crowd-appeasing thing she just said.

Gaga admitted all of this during her monologue on last night’s (Nov. 16) episode of Saturday Night Live, which marked her hosting debut and proved Mother Monster isn’t afraid to poke a little fun at herself.

Gaga showed off her comedy chops, sticking mostly to musical skits like the one about a compilation album called Whaaat? The Worst Cover Songs of All Time that featured Britney Spears singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” Rick Ross doing Anna Kendricks’ “Cups” from Pitch Perfect, Adele (kind of) doing the “Theme from L.A. Law” and Gaga performing Madonna’s “Express Yourself.” Except, it was really Gaga performing her own song “Born This Way.” Remember how everyone thought it sounded like the Material Girl’s 1989 song? Yep, that’s what they were doing here.

But the best skit of the night was the one about a mock morning show hosted by Kanye West and Kim Kardashian called Waking Up with Kimye, which had Jay Pharoah as Kanye recreating his Yeezus yelps to introduce segments like “What Kim Made,” which this time around was a macaroni necklace that led Yeezy to proclaim “food is jewelry now.”

Gaga, playing a Apple Store employee named Karen who Kanye does not think has the right to call herself a genius, gets in a little jab at herself during a segment called “Kim Wore It Better,” where, dressed in khakis, she questioned other people’s obsession with their clothes.

“People who try to hard with their fashion are hiding something,” Gaga said with a wink.

Her musical performance of “Do What U Want” off her recently released album, ARTPOP, was less about the costume–here Gaga was dressed as a disco mermaid in a sparkly silver jumpsuit–and more about getting naughty with R. Kelly.

Kelz sauntered out and threw Gaga over his shoulder to perform his verse. Later, he handed his microphone off to his personal mic fly girl as he pretended to get it on with Gaga on the floor of Studio 8H floor.

Things were much more G-rated for her performance of “Gypsy,” which she recently dedicated to Jeff Koons at her artRAVE. Gaga sat at her piano in her technicolor bubble wrap bodysuit to channel her inner Elton John as she sang about finding someone to see the world with.

Shannon Carlin

Shannon Carlin
Shannon is an associate music producer for Radio.com. She previously worked as the music editor for Beyond Race Magazine, before earning a master's degree from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. While interning at NPR she wrote...